Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!ambar From: ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Jean Marie Diaz) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: readnews skips news groups Message-ID: Date: 22 Oct 89 04:21:00 GMT References: <164@ora.UUCP> <1119@kl-cs.UUCP> Sender: root@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: Madhouse International Technologies Lines: 28 In-reply-to: jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk's message of 21 Oct 89 16:02:39 GMT 2) YOU'RE WRONG. Go type 'man newsrc' and read what it says. Then put your 'options' line in your .newsrc file. I did not err in anything I said. I merely omitted mentioning the 'options' line in the .newsrc, for good reason. I think that it is a bad idea, and refuse to suggest to people that they use it. The problem is that .newsrc's are not only read by B News 2.11 vnews and readnews --- they are also read by vn, nn, GNUS, Gnews, and rn. (To name a few.) Putting 'options' lines in the .newsrc requires all authors of other newsreaders to either skip those lines, or try to translate them appropriately. Ick. IMHO, the first design error was in not simply walking through all subscribed newsgroups in the .newsrc (in the absence of other -n options). Putting 'options' lines in the .newsrc merely compounded the error, by assuming that no other (incompatible) newsreaders would ever be written. The right thing would be a .vnewsinit or suchlike. (In case it's not obvious, this is not intended to be a flame at Rick Adams or any other authors of news software. After spending 30-odd hours this week documenting both B News 2.11 and C News, I think it's safe to say that I have some appreciation of the work involved.) AMBAR ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu {mit-eddie,uunet}!bloom-beacon!ambar